Product Offers

Product offers are the basis for the pricing components that subscriptions, groups, and devices purchase, either singly or in bundles.

Individual product offers can have multiple versions, each with their own validity periods and associated revisions. Product offers define the pricing and policy profiles that are applied during service usage, recurring cycle processing, catalog item purchases, catalog item cancelations, first use of a balance, and balance auto-renewal. A Pricing User creates product offers and configures the list of template fields that a Catalog User customizes to create the catalog items that you add to your pricing plan.

There are five types of product offers you can make available for purchase: subscription offers, one time offers, global offers, finance contract offers, and service contract offers.
  • Subscription offers provide a service over an extended period of time and can have recurring charges and grants. A common example is a monthly data plan for a service.
  • One time offers are evaluated (rated) only once when the offer is purchased and do not provide ongoing usage or recurring charges.
  • Global offers are the only product offers that you can make available without purchase. Global offers allow usage services to be provided to a wide set of subscribers without the need for each subscriber to purchase the offer.
  • Finance contract offers define the pricing components required to set up the finance contract for purchase by a subscription or group. A finance contract is sold as a separate catalog item and cannot be bundled.
  • Service contract offers define the terms and charges for a service, for example, voice or data. A service contract can be purchased by a subscription, group, or device. A service contract offer, whether purchased as a separate catalog item or as part of a bundle, cannot be suspended and cannot be purchased in a pre-active state.

When an offer is purchased, it can create and use various balances and meters in the subscription or group wallet. If an offer is purchased at the device level, balances and meters can be configured to be usable only by that device. For details, see the discussion about offers with device-specific balances or meters.

Product Offer Properties

Configure product offer properties in My MATRIXX. Properties include:
  • General product offer properties — Configure offer general required and optional properties.
  • Start/end dates and times — Specify the validation period for the offer revision.
  • Price components — Add predefined price components the offer requires.
  • Parameters — Add parameters and specify the default parameter values. You can override the default parameter values in the offer within a catalog definition or at purchase time.
  • Balances — Add required balances and set the primary balance. When the offer is purchased, an instance of each required balance is added to the subscriber or group wallet. During rating, this makes the balance a candidate for the pricing associated with that product offer.
  • Balance state — Add predefined balance state update components to the offer. Balance state update components extend the end time of a balance instance in a subscriber's wallet when the offer is purchased.
  • Rollover components — Add predefined rollover components that an offer requires.
  • Meters — Specify predefined meters that a subscriber wallet must contain before purchasing the offer.
  • Priorities — Set the order in which valid offers are applied during rating. If a subscriber owns multiple product offers, the one with the highest priority is applied.
  • Policies — Apply an optional predefined policy component to the offer. Policy components must have been predefined.
  • Proration settings — Define how much of offer charges, grants, or time periods are applied or refunded if the offer is canceled.
  • Tax/GST properties — Define how taxes are applied to charge price components contained in the product offer during rating. For each charge application type, you specify the tax class(es), whether the tax is included in pricing, and whether MATRIXX Engine adds specific tax amount information to the Event Detail Record (EDR). If you use dynamic tax selection, you can also specify the tax selector that determines the taxes to apply. You select the charge application type to define how taxes are applied for charges of that type.
  • Custom fields — Configure predefined custom fields for the offer. You must have previously created private product offer MATRIXX Data Containers (MDCs) and add them to the MATRIXX Engine schema.
  • Attributes — Add predefined attributes to the offer.
  • Template fields — Apply a catalog item template, select the template fields to include in the catalog item, and add default values to those template fields.
  • Cycle data — Create a purchased item cycle for triggering recurring processing. The purchased item cycle is independent of the balance cycle or billing cycle recurring processing that the rest of the Charging Server uses. The purchased item cycle for a bundle overrides that of any offers in the bundle, and the purchased item cycle in an offer overrides the Charging Server cycles.
  • Activation filters — Specify an activation filter. To activate the offer, the offer must satisfy all activation elements in the filter.
  • Usage quota components — Add a usage quota component to the offer.
  • Add usage triggers — Add usage trigger components to the offer and specify the profiles and components the trigger requires.
  • Repository data component — Assign an Sh repository data component.
  • Offer owner state update component — Add offer owner update components to an offer.
For more information about configuring product offers, including options and restrictions, see the discussion about creating a new revision of a product offer in My MATRIXX Help.

US Taxation

When US taxation calculation is configured, enable US taxation and set a default provider type in My MATRIXX. The Charging Server uses the provider type on the product offer to look up applicable tax rates for US taxation. The default provider type set in Tax Setting is used on the product offer unless a specific provider type is selected on the product offer. This means that if the default value set in Tax Setting changes, that new value is used on all product offers that use the default value. If a provider type is selected on an offer, then that provider type is always used on the offer.

For example, Use US Tax is selected on Tax Setting:
  • Default provider type at the domain is set to WIRELESS.
    • Create Offer 1 and use the default provider type (WIRELESS).
    • Create Offer 2 and select CLEC as the provider type.
    • Create Offer 3 and use the default provider type (WIRELESS).
  • Default provider type at the domain is changed to VOICE.
    • Offer 1 uses the default provider type (VOICE).
    • Offer 2 uses the provider type selected on the offer (CLEC).
    • Offer 3 uses the default provider type (VOICE).
    • Create Offer 4 and use the default provider type (VOICE).

For more information about enabling US taxation and setting the default provider type, see the discussion about configuring US tax settings in My MATRIXX Help. For more information about US tax calculation and provider type, see the discussion about US taxation in MATRIXX Pricing and Rating.

Bundle Offers

You can bundle subscription offers, one time offers, and service contract offers. Bundled offers collect one or more product offers together so they can be purchased as one product. When purchased for a subscription or group, all bundled product offers are available to all devices associated with that subscription or group. When purchased for a specific device, the product offers included in the bundle are available only for that device. A service contract product offer can be bundled with other product offers but a bundle can contain only one service contract product offer. For more information service contract product offers in bundles, see the discussion about bundles.

Parameter Definitions

You can add a list of parameters to product offers and specify their default values. You can override the default value by setting the value to use within a catalog definition or at purchase time. When you add a price component that has parameters to an offer, MATRIXX also creates a default parameter binding between each price component parameter and a parameter with the same name in the offer. You can edit the default parameter binding to select a different parameter, if required. For more information about parameter definitions, see the discussion about parameters.

Pricing Plans

All these product offers have a list of template fields you can make available for a Catalog User to customize in the catalog items that you add to your pricing plan. A Configuration User can extend the list as necessary.
Note: An offer must contain at least one of the following pricing plan items in order for it to be valid and compiled into the pricing XML configuration file:
  • Price components
  • Policy components
  • Required balances
  • Balance state update components
  • Balance rollover components
  • Meters
When Create External Payment Request is enabled on the balance template associated with an offer, external payment requests are generated at offer purchase time and in advance of new cycle start time. Currency charges for these offers are associated with external payments. For more information about external payment requests, see the discussion about balances with external payment requests.

Reauthorization

MATRIXX Engine sends a Re-Auth Request (RAR) to the network for a subscriber-management (SubMan) request, when an open session is inactive, or on content quota expiration.

Some SubMan APIs do not send a RAR. For example, AdjustBalance, TopupBalance, and Recharge. If you want a RAR returned, for example, at the time of recharge, you can implement the recharge using a one time purchase that grants currency. Upon purchase of the one time offer, a RAR is generated so that the offer is reauthorized.

For more information about RARs, see the discussion about Gy Re-Auth-Request (RAR) messages.

Product Offer Start Type

The start type is the default behavior if a start time is not specified during purchase. Start Type describes the start time behavior by start type based on whether the start time is specified at purchase.
Table 1. Start Type
Start Type Start Time Specified at Purchase Start Time not Specified at Purchase
None The product offer start time is the start time specified at purchase. The product offer start time is not set.
Purchase If the start time is specified at purchase, it must be before or the same as the purchase time. If the date is in the future, any attempt to purchase that offer will fail until the offer becomes valid. If the start time is not specified at purchase, the product offer is valid from the time of purchase.
Absolute The product offer becomes valid on the specified date/time. You must specify the month, day, and year and, optionally, specify a time of day. If the date is specified but not the time, then the product offer becomes valid at 12:00:00 AM on the specified date. If the start time is not specified at purchase, the product offer becomes valid at the StartTime specified in the pricing configuration.
Note: When specifying StartType=absolute in the pricing configuration, you must also specify a StartTime.